The other side of reason

TECHNOLOGY: A new smartphone app for supporters of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has been greeted with mixed reviews since it was released at the weekend.

In a press release the party says that the new tool demonstrates a commitment to both supporters and UKIP-watchers alike, billing it as “A British app for British campaigners”.

But critics claim that the software is incomplete, with some promised features missing in the initial release.

Novel features

Criticism aside, the application, which is available for both iPhone and Android devices, is certainly equipped with some novel features.

The POLICY FINDER is likely to be one of the most used tools by both party candidates and journalists, using advanced heuristic algorithms involving the day of the week and the user’s location to confirm what the party’s official policy is on any issue where doubts may arise. Software engineers who have examined the app also believe that the facility can determine the proximity of microphones to fine tune the results.

Party faithful who find themselves feeling parched will welcome a facility which locates the nearest Public House and provides turn by turn navigation to get straight to the Saloon Bar.

And those canvassing on doorsteps will doubtless also welcome the built in weather forecast, which takes account of the numbers of gay marriages in the locality.

Without doubt, however, the FIND A FRIEND function will probably be the most used. Similar in concept to Grindr, the app uses the phone’s GPS and a comprehensive database of UKIP, EDL and BNP members to map all likeminded individuals in the immediate locality. Users can then hook up and discover what they have in common. This will probably be used in conjunction with the Public House locator.

Incomplete

Reviewers say that some eagerly expected features are missing though. The app was expected to include a migrant monitor, displaying the number of foreigners in the country and claiming benefits at any instant. Sources say that the numbers being displayed were a lot smaller than anticipated though, so the option won’t be released until the app is displaying the expected results.

A feature to locate bona-fide UKIP social media accounts has also been excluded from the initial release. Sources attribute this to an inability to determine the real sites from spoof ones.

The party otherwise remains tight lipped about further developments. A spokesman said that all the features could still change, “especially if Nigel has a say”.

BRITAIN: A group calling itself ‘Rational Britain’ is calling for the country’s small but significant population of Little Englanders to be offered cash incentives if they will return to their ‘Natural Homelands’.

The movement, which has has a Facebook group and almost Sixty Million UK followers, is the latest manifestation of an increasingly polarised debate about who should leave the country and to where.

Backlash

Support for the movement has mushroomed since a controversial van-based poster campaign and actions by Border Agency officials last week backfired on the organisers.

The campaign had aimed to intimidate ‘foreign-looking’ people to feel they were unwelcome, using language first coined by the National Front more than fifty years ago, and since embraced by other racist groups.

Rational Britain are instead calling for the Little Englanders to swallow their own medicine and pack their bags.

“We don’t want them here with their little-minded views” was a typical response from people on the street this week.

Not racist

Commentators have questioned whether a campaign to repatriate Little Englanders to their eponymous ‘natural homeland’ is just as racist.

“We agonised over this”, one of the organisers told us in an exclusive interview, “but we realised that it can’t be racist to be anti-racist.”

“The two cancel each other out.”

Obstacles

But the plan has met with an immediate obstacle.

Native residents of Little England say they have not been consulted and would not welcome a sudden influx of ‘foreign’ Little Englanders from the UK, regardless of their ancestry.

“The Little Englanders you have in Britain have been living there for generations. They know nothing of our true culture and it would be hard, if not impossible, to assimilate them after all this time”, said Town Mayor Virginia Hampton.

HOME OFFICE, LONDON: Officials at the UK Home Office were not returning calls today, as the spread of an aggressive new pigmentation virus is said to have wrecked policy initiatives that rely on racial profiling.

The pigmentation virus has been spreading for weeks now and continues to baffle doctors.

Pandemic

Dubbed “Minstrel Flu” by the tabloid press, the disease has spread rapidly from the Home Counties, where it first appeared, and now affects the whole country.

The virus is know to stimulate melanocytes (the cells in the skin responsible for pigmentation) into permanent over production.

In this respect the condition is similar but opposite in effect to Vitiligo, which is responsible for depigmentation of normally dark skinned people.

Varying effects

The intensity of the effects can vary. For some the skin darkening may result in them being mistaken for people with a South Asian racial origin.

Others have the full “Central African” variant.

Prominent early cases included the entire leadership of the English Defence League (who claim they caught it from UKIP), and certain members of the Government.

Home Secretary Theresa May has herself bravely spoken about her diagnosis.

Airborne

The highly infectious virus can be transmitted by various means.

Scientists believe that the original strain could only be spread by direct contact.

In fact it is believed that the outbreak began as the result of contamination in a batch of paper used for printing the Daily Mail.

This would explain why the first reported cases were among people with right leaning views.

The virus appears now to have mutated, however, spreading even faster on airborne particles.

Nobody is therefore safe, unless a means of immunisation can be found.

For those who have already contracted the full condition, there is no means of reversal.

Policy turmoil

Whilst doctors continue to grapple with the outbreak, the Government and Civil Servants are meanwhile posed with serious operational questions.

The operation of the UK Border Agency has until now relied on an unspoken policy of racial profiling.

Although policy is in theory applicable to all incoming migrants, regardless of colour or race, officials have found it easier to concentrate their efforts until now on people who “look foreign”, in the words of a source.

This approach has extended to a recent widely publicised Home Office initiative, swooping on persons who are suspected to be illegal migrants who have outstayed their entry visa conditions.

“We’ve not been targeting overstaying visitors and migrants from places like Australia and the United States because it doesn’t look good”, explained a UK Border Agency (UKBA) official.

“Nobody’s going to vote the Conservatives back for getting rid of a few white faces. Who would notice?”

“And how would we get the bar staff?”

Profiling nightmare

The official, who had a rich lustrous brown skin, confessed that he and his colleagues had been finding it much easier to concentrate on Asians and other dark skinned people, regardless of how long they, their parents, or even their grandparents had been resident.

“OK, we were getting false positives all the time”, he admitted, “…but we felt this was just a harmless collateral effect which was proportionate, given the importance of the overall policy”.

Now things were harder though.

“Look, I’ve been stopped three times this morning just getting into work”, spluttered our informant, who claimed a long ancestry in the Guildford area.”

“We want to give the pupils a first hand appreciation of geography, among other things” explained head of communications, Sir Bullington Club.

“Our old boys have obvious gaps in their knowledge of what takes place north of Watford … well, north of Hampstead, actually”.

“We understand that jet planes go to Manchester these days, but not many private ones.”

“And how is a boy to learn about the world other than by jetting in and out?”

Fagging

Boys in the lower school are understood to have welcomed the news that they won’t need to perform fagging duties at Salford.

“We plan to outsource these duties to local youth”, says Club.

“This makes it entirely feasible to move either the whole upper or lower school, as they will no longer have this link.”

Foie Gras

The move follows extensive surveys of other potential sites. However it is believed that the proximity of the Manchester Ship Canal, and the consequent ease of importing sufficient supplies of Champagne and Pate de Foie Gras, swung votes in favour of the modern waterside district.

Boys can also be inducted straight into the BBC from school, as a first step towards their natural destiny of running everything.

Encouraged, doubtless, by the popularity of the Guardian’s ‘Republican’ button, which removes all Royal Family coverage, The Times has added buttons to select Left and Right-leaning content on its site. Here you see the left-leaning content selected. An editorial spokesman admitted that the actual content needed a little work.

BREAKING: REDMOND AND CUPERTINO. Computer giants Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) joined forces today in an unprecedented simultaneous rollout of new operating system upgrades which, it is hoped, will deter men from using Internet-enabled computers to access images of child abuse.

The new Onameter™ software is a kernel level extension to the Windows™, OSX™ and iOS™ operating systems, using recent advances in gesture detection and the built in hardware of modern computer systems to register the so-called ‘signature’ signs of masturbationand report the material being viewed at the time.

The Windows™ upgrade will be installed during Patch Tuesday™. Apple devices will be updated immediately.

Separate implementations

The rival companies stress that their implementations of the Onameter™ are not identical.

Each claims superior features which the other cannot provide.

Both companies stress that the feature cannot be turned off, and that they believe it will douse interest in online porn, images of child abuse and rape almost overnight.

Image, sound and motion based

In all cases the Onameter™ software works by combining signals from the laptop or mobile device’s built-in cameras and microphones to assess the likelihood that the person in front of the screen is masturbating.

Apple claims extra accuracy by combining signals from the accelerometers which are built into iPhones™, iPads™ and even some Macbook™ models.

“We are using some really cool motion capture stuff that our guys invented for the Kinect™ and XBox™ “, enthused a representative. This allows us to register the very beginning of a wank, even before serious motion has occurred.

In either case, the operating system algorithms determine a “Masturbation Likelihood Assessment” (MLA) and send this with a screen shot and camera image to local law enforcers if a threshold value is crossed.

Both companies say the details of the algorithms and the threshold values are proprietary secrets, which each hopes will give them a competitive edge in this brand new field.

The threshold values can also be adjusted in collaboration with national police forces if there are too many false positives.

Apple promise an iPhone and iPad app for anxious wives and parents too, so that they can monitor lawful masturbatory activity by husbands and adolescent sons.

Caveats

Both companies say that all new and recent operating systems and platforms will be included in the mandatory upgrade.

However, Microsoft explain that for technical reasons it is not possible to retrospectively install the upgrade on Windows 95 and 98 computers.

“We know those guys are wankers anyway”, explained a spokesman, “so the software would be going off all the time and degrade system performance”.

Apple also stressed that the software was only so far able to detect episodic masturbators, for which there are clear physical signature markers. “We can’t yet detect figurative wankers, although female customers tell us they can usually spot those anyway.”

Welcomed

The roll out of the new features has been cautiously welcomed by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, who said that attempts to disable the software would be made a criminal offence … except in Government, where separate rules apply to everything.